This article appears in the Winter 2015 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . The Stronghold: How Republicans Captured Congress but Surrendered the White House By Thomas F. Schaller 368 pp. Yale University Press. $32.50 Latino America: How America’s Most Dynamic Population is Poised to Transform the Politics of the Nation By Matt Barreto and Gary Segura 304 pp. PublicAffairs Books. $26.99 Recent national election results have followed a clear pattern. Since 1992, Democratic candidates have won four of six presidential elections and the popular vote for president five times out of six. Only George W. Bush’s narrow re-election victory in 2004 has interrupted the recent string of Democratic popular-vote successes. Over the same period, however, Republicans have won a majority of seats in the House of Representatives in nine of twelve elections and a majority of seats in the Senate in six of 12 elections, with one election, in 2000, resulting in a 50-50 tie...

The past two election cycles have not been kind to the Republican Party. Since 2006, the GOP has lost 14 seats in the U.S. Senate and 54 seats in the House of Representatives. So naturally Republicans have been looking forward to the 2010 midterm elections. Not since 1994 have they gone into an election cycle with such high expectations. With Democrats defending a large number of seats in traditionally Republican territory, unemployment hovering just below 10 percent, and a Democratic president with mediocre approval ratings, Republicans have high hopes of picking up a large number of House and Senate seats and possibly taking control of one or both chambers. It is almost certain that Republicans will make substantial gains in the midterm election. But there is growing concern among some GOP leaders and strategists that the party may fall short of its goals because of a growing internal schism between the party establishment and conservative grassroots activists. In a number of races...